The Power of Testimonials

I just visited the websites of six prominent public golf courses here in Charlotte, where I live. These courses are desperate for business. Their websites are terrible. One of them got a dismal 39/100 on HubSpot's Website Grader (www.websitegrader.com).

There are ZERO testimonials. Shocking. Testimonials are vital for two reasons.

1. Proof you keep your promises.
2. You find out what's really important to your clients/customers.

Some tips for testimonials.

• The more the merrier. Testimonials are like snow at a ski resort--you can never have enough.
• Get someone to harvest them; a copywriter can help--I've often put them together.
• Make them stand out graphically. Either with a photo or some type of graphical element.
• Ask the testimonial giver if it's OK to tidy up grammar, spelling. A testimonial that reads, "their grate at Charlotte Golf club because its they're service which are ALWAYS awesime" is like Miss World with zits.
• Yes--if you have 100 testimonials, readers will not necessarily read all of them but the sheer volume can be impressive.
• Audio and video testimonials--YES!

I'm rebuilding my website so the testimonials page needs some work but it's there and Squarespace makes it easy to make them stand out. I'll add more and also add some photos.

Case studies are 'advanced testimonials' and these are even more powerful. Yes--they take work to put together but, if you can't put case studies together right away, make a point to get at least three testimonials a week. With photos.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

An interesting and powerful page on Google's site (part 5)

In this series of five blogs, I'm going through the excellent content advice on this page on Google's site. In this final part of this series I'm looking at the paragraph that begins...

Learn what is interesting to your visitors

One of the keys to content is discovering precisely what's important to your readers. You probably have a hunch but, with analytics, you can discover which content fires up your readers. Once you discover the content that works, keep feeding them similar content. From the article...

Try to improve your content mix using what you learn from these reports. By keeping an eye on what the analytics are telling you, you'll learn more about your visitors and be able to provide just the information they are looking for.

That's one of the true beauties of a blog--it's an easy way to test content. A lot of the people in the analytics game use Google Analytics, there are plenty of other tools available. Pay close attention to email unsubscribes when you send out your emails. If you're keeping people on board then your content is useful.

Controversy for the Sake of Controversy

I'm not a fighter or an argumentative type. Very few of my blogs include fighting words. But my friend, Andrew Wood, loves to get people stirred up and some of his most popular blogs have been controversial ones. Controversy is a powerful weapon in content but use it periodically. I'm going to start using it a bit more--and get controversial. I'll find out if it's interesting to visitors.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

An interesting and powerful page on Google's site (part 4)

In this series of five blogs, I'm going through the excellent content advice on this page on Google's site. Today I'm looking at the paragraph that begins...

Increase your visibility.

Here's an excerpt.

To a search engine, the best sites consist of many HTML files, each one text rich...Even more important, you'll find that other sites like to link to pages with useful information. Having lots of sites pointing to your articles...can improve your natural (unpaid) search engine rankings.

Q: How do you get people pointing to your site?

A: The content must be really, really compelling. And that's where serious writing comes into play. Technically, anyone with a computer can be a writer. But a big reason to hire a seasoned and experienced writer is to generate compelling content.

A lot of people ask me, "What does a copywriter do?" The short answer is "type a lot." But my two goals are to:

1. Sell
2. Get someone to hand over their information

To achieve these goals, the copy and content has to be compelling, interesting, salient, and persuasive. There's a simple test...response. Ask to see actual conversion rates when you ask to see a portfolio. A web page I wrote is currently converting at over 30%...which is off the charts. The copy and content are compelling.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

An interesting and powerful page on Google's site (part 3)

In this series of five blogs, I'm going through the excellent content advice on this page on Google's site.

The second paragraph begins with this subhead.

Establish your points of difference.

And then continues with this question...

"Why would a customer choose to buy from you rather than from one of the many other businesses just like yours?"

And then...

"Tell visitors about what makes your approach to the business unique. If you specialize in a certain area or approach, tell them how - and why."

Incredibly, very few websites really work hard to tell me why the company/product/service is unique--and better. Although I don't like the word 'unique' that much.

We're not talking about a glib tagline (It's the Real Thing) but it's your USP--unique selling proposition. On my new website, I'm making a clear statement: I'm a direct response copywriter and I help direct marketing agencies and companies that use a direct marketing model with all their copywriting needs. At some stage in the future, I'm going to drill down and differentiate myself further as I specialize. But for now, I'm your direct response copywriter.

I see a lot of Flash, a lot of big graphics, a lot of this and that, plus a lot of fluffy copy but it's rare when I see a website that really tells me why the company is different and better than others. It's not easy. But here's a piece I wrote about developing a USP.

Tomorrow, I'm going through the paragraph with the subhead: 

Increase your visibility.

Hint: it's not an excuse to load a million photos to your website.

But seriously, take a look at your website right now and ask yourself if you REALLY differentiate yourself from others.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.

An interesting and powerful page on Google's site (part 2)

In this series of five blogs, I'm going through the excellent content advice on this page on Google's site.

Two subheads I want to target...

• Satisfy their need to know.
• Teach.

The best websites I see provide a ton of salient information...information the reader will find valuable. The benefits are immense.

• The reader sees you as an expert.
• They stay on your site longer.
• You build a bond with the reader and establish trust.
• Your competitors will rarely make the effort to develop strong educational content, providing you with a big advantage.
• Your search engine rankings improve dramatically. Search engines love relevant, fresh content.

It all adds up to conversion--and higher revenue.

From the article.

"To create this content, ask yourself, 'What would I need to know if I were in the market for this product or service?" Then, think of different ways to present the information."

Three excellent ways to educate are the FAQ page, a case studies page, and a blog.

An FAQ page is easy to put together and it answers many of the questions a potential customer will ask. Remember, it's a sales page. Here's my FAQ page. Thanks for my graphic designer/developer Melody Watson for finding the code for the accordion on Squarespace.

Case studies are more difficult and take more time. But they are incredibly powerful. I'm working on changing my testimonials page to a case studies page. But here's a magnificent case studies page. That page is a thing of great beauty.

And a blog is perhaps the easiest way to educate--and stir people up.

Here's another great quote from the Google article.

"You may not consider yourself an expert in your field, but you probably know a great deal more than you give yourself credit for. Chances are that visitors will appreciate any advice you care to give. Writing articles related to your business and publishing them on your site can put you in the enviable situation of being perceived as an authority."

And the article encourages you to give the advice away for free...but make sure you get at least an email address.

You get qualified leads you can nurture into paying clients.

Tomorrow we'll go into establishing points of difference--your USP.

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I'm a direct response copywriter based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I specialize in providing copy and content for the direct marketing environment. Enter your info to the right for my free series: Seven Steps to High Converting Copy. Or contact me here.